I recently sat down to speak with Dr. Mike Bohl, the Director of Medical Content & Education at Ro, to speak about what we can do to better engage and empower patients through content. The webinar recording and transcript can be found below.
Transcript
Mike
Yeah, so So first off, just thank you for having me here. This is stuff I get really excited talking about and doing. So I want to thank you for inviting me onto your platform, and I really look forward to the conversation we're about to have. So to get to your question, I might not actually have the most exciting answer here. I grew up surrounded by doctors, my dad's sister, brother in law, grandfather, uncles, cousins. So medicine just always seemed like a strong career option that I was familiar with, placed value on education, and seemed to have a lot of choice within it. So that's where I headed. I got into a combined college and medical school programme that really solidified that decision. I've actually always been really interested in teeth, though. So had I not gotten into the combined programme, I likely would have ended up as a dentist, and my life would have been very different than it is now. But here I am. That's how I got started in medicine.
Unknown Speaker
That's awesome.
James Naylor
I mean, I guess that I mean, growing up around practising physicians and providers. I mean, it still seems like a bit of a a right turn to then go into I believe the next step was with Dr. Oz. What encouraged you to move from actually like, practising to Yeah, the content side of things.
Mike
Yeah, so my initial exposure to medical content actually just came by chance. While I enjoyed knowing medical information, individual patient care wasn't really inspiring me. The way medicine is practised today is very algorithmic, not that that's necessarily good or bad. But charting and billing are such an overwhelming part of it, that it's not really the field anymore that I grew up seeing with my family. So I had already started to look for other ways to use my medical knowledge beyond the clinic. I did a year of research, where I was involved in some pretty cool projects with rabbits, chickens, human skeletons. And then the Dr. Oz Show just kind of showed up on my doorstep. I think I was studying for, like my psychiatry shop exam, when I got an email about taking a year off living in New York City working in television. And I was like, This sounds fantastic. So I sent an application off. And a few months later, I was working at the show as a medical student producer. I didn't really have much or any content training at the time, just basically an excitement to learn something new. And working with the show was like jumping into the deep end. There were three others in the in the same role. I was majoring that year, and we supported each other and had a fun time.
James Naylor
Okay, that's awesome. So when you joined Actually, I didn't know this. We use still, this was just going to be like a short term job. And then you were going to go back where you took all of your studies.
Mike
Yeah, so it was it was a one year contract. I was there for season seven. And it came partway through my medical school career.
James Naylor
Okay, awesome. And I'd love to like dig in a bit then in terms of like, what what do they have you doing? Because it's such a different world, I think to the one that most of us here we'll know whether we're in like marketing or product around like engaging empowering patients to like television. So like, what did they have you doing? And also like, what, what were some of the key learnings from from your time there?
Mike
Yeah, so the the show was really, like I said, my first exposure to content, and how to communicate medical information to non medical professionals. Internally, I was working with the writers and producers on the scripts. I also forged a really close working relationship with legal team, which was actually an important partnership that I've carried through my other roles at other companies as well. I learned how to appropriately substantiate medical claims and when certain government regulations apply. The fun part, though, was learning how to best communicate that information to the appropriate audience. So we had a lot of different ways we could do this. We were writing for the website, we were putting together radio scripts, and then there were the demonstrations that we had created for the show. And those really fell into basically three different buckets, there were animations we would make that would show complex medical processes and easier to understand ways. There was like medical testing we would do with audience members. And there were the the live demonstrations that we would do on set, I was actually pretty well known for these live demonstrations, and they were a lot of fun to put together. It was really about fusing like creativity with medical knowledge, and figuring out how to make things as visual as possible. So for one example, while while I was there, we were talking about the new statin guidelines. And we wanted to show how statins work. So we bought these two, like giant tubes that were arteries. And then in one, we would pour down all the small red balls to show like, this is how blood flow is supposed to go through your artery. And then then the other one would spray like this really sticky yellow stuff to represent atherosclerosis, and which are harder for the balls to flow through this one, and get around the plaques. And then we took it another step further, we showed like what a plaque rupture would look like inside of the artery and try pouring the balls out again and said, Look, here's a real blockage. This is basically what a heart attack is. And then we basically talk through like, Okay, here's what everything looks like. And here's what statins are actually doing in your body. And I think that the best part of it was really like Dr. Oz show films ahead of time. It's not live on television, but we do have that live studio audience that's there. And they were engaged, they were having fun. It was a topic that was relevant to them. We were giving them a way that they could then go home and explain what they learned to everybody else that they know. So yeah, that was one of the biggest takeaways was learning how you make medical information, fun and easy to understand. The other big takeaway, or the other big understanding was how to craft your message to the appropriate audience. This is a this is a pretty common in marketing. I like you, you always figure out your target persona, when you're marketing. But I don't know how much people realise it's important in medical education as well. So in marketing, a standard practice to develop that persona, or the person you're targeting your message to. I've done this a few places that I've worked at. And the personas can get pretty specific, they have names, they have marital statuses, we know how many children that you have, where their favourite foods, our favourite activities, their feelings about cultural trends, and you craft your marketing messages to feel more personalised and inspire them to take an action. And with marketing that's, that's buying something. But I think we should really be doing the same thing with with medicine. A lot of medical information that currently exists is pretty generic and bland. This is drug A, it does B you need to watch out for XYZ. But there's a there's a real opportunity to use content to connect people to their health. Everybody already knows that you should be eating a healthy diet, getting some exercise, taking your medications as prescribed. But how do you make it exciting for them? How do you show them what it actually like? Like means in their life. In one of the writing classes, I took separate from the show, we talked about always leading with the with them. That's why FM it stands for what's in it for me. So if you hook somebody with a good waveform at the beginning, they stay engaged. They learn what you want them to know. So I think those are those are my three really big takeaways from us, which is basically how do you make information easy? How do you know who you're talking to? And how do you connect that information to their lives?
James Naylor
That's yeah, that's fascinating. And I've got a few questions that I want to ask. But I might I might save them actually. Because I know you're going to speak through your medical content continuum, which will, which will tee up in a moment, but maybe just a short question before before you do that. So after that year, obviously, you didn't go and don't believe you went back to your studies. Like what was it during that experience that kept you in capturing the content world from from that? So,
Mike
so yeah, so I did go back to my studies. Briefly, just to kind of wrap up what I had already started. Like I mentioned the show came about three quarters through a medical school career. So I still needed to finish school. Figure out exactly what I wanted to do with a residency and all of that. The real aha moment It sounds kind of cheesy, but when it when it came to me deciding on a career in medical education was when I was in that last year medical school, I was seeing patients in the office. And I was talking to this one woman about her diabetes. And she was mentioning the show that she saw on TV that taught her about her diabetes, and it happened to be one that I had actually worked on the year prior. So that really solidified things. For me, I realised, okay, this is where I can make a much bigger impact through content and medical education than I can by seeing patients individually in the office. So that's what that's what really sent me down that path. So you're right, I was done with the show. But I stayed on from that point as the medical editor and writer of Dr. oz.com. For a few years, I picked up a couple of contracting positions, to do medical review for some other companies. And I tried to educate myself, I got a Master of Public Health, during which I took some classes and did a practicum project that focused on health communication. I also got a Master of Liberal Arts in the field of journalism. And as part of that, I got certificates in digital storytelling and marketing management and digital strategy. And I basically just kept my LinkedIn profile updated. And eventually, one day, my current employer popped into my inbox saying, I looked great further Senior Medical writer role. Leaving leaving clinical medicine is a scary decision. The way the whole system is structured. I think it feels very difficult to go back if you ever change your mind. But I knew what I wanted. I saw this opportunity. So I decided to take that leap.
James Naylor
Awesome. Okay, that's fantastic. Well, I'd love now to move on. I think a lot of us I'd see like you've spoken about, or to me personally, you're like medical content continuing that talks through education, blogs and advertising. But yeah, maybe if you could speak through that. And then I can do a bit of a deep dive into those different areas. For the audience. Yeah,
Mike
sounds fantastic. So let me just get my screen shared.
Unknown Speaker
Okay, are you seeing the right thing? Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. Okay,
Mike
fantastic. So so this doesn't really exist anywhere else. This is just something I developed on my own to frame how I think about the different types of medical content that helps tech companies can focus on.
Unknown Speaker
But basically, oops, I can't tell you the answer.
Mike
Oh, there we go. Okay. Basically, I think of medical content as this continuum that has pure education on one end, and per pure promotion on the other end, because I think for most companies interested in the medical content strategy, their goals are one of these two things or a mix somewhere in between. So we'll walk through what each of these things means in a little bit more detail. But basically, I think there's these five broad categories, from left to right, there's, there's patient education, then there's public education, companies can set up a branded health blog, and they can create branded or sponsored content. And then there's basically product advertising. There is this one other type of medical content I think you could put over here on the left, which is research. But I think the motivations behind publishing and doing research are a little different than the other items on the continuum. So I really think of it as existing in its own box. So let's let's go through and define each of these a little bit more. Patient Education on the left is your patient facing content, you serve it up to patients directly, there's no need to consider things like search engine optimization, or SEO, you can use this type of content to make sure you're practising medicine responsibly, you can check in on how patients are engaging with it, if it's impacting retention, and if it's improving clinical outcomes. It's really the type of content whose strategy I think should be driven by the medical team. They're the ones with experience treating patients that are the ones that know what patients need to know. And this is the equivalent of what a provider would say to you in the office, or the pamphlet that they would send you home with. But basically, I think this is a really important bucket, because these days, a patient's first move, when they have question probably isn't going to be calling up their provider. They're going to be looking through whatever materials they have at their disposal, and seeing if the answer is there first. Continuing across the bottom to the next item is our branded health blog. So this is like long form written content that you can publish that may look pretty similar to your patient education, but it's intended for the general public. So because of that, you're not necessarily serving it up to readers or viewers directly. So you need to make sure it's SEO friendly, so that it makes it on the search engine results page because otherwise nobody's going to see it and what's the point? So Healthwatch can make consumers aware of your company. It can drive your website's eat or expertise, authority and trust. It can boost your domain authority. And as we'll talk about medical team involvement is is pretty important here. But the exact strategy, I think should involve the growth team or some kind of similar team depending on exactly how you're structured. And then the last item along the bottom here is product advertising. This is basically what it sounds like digital ads, print ads, social media, TV and radio spots, out of home advertising, any other promotional content that follows the rules of search engine marketing. It's used for acquisition. And it's usually strategically conceived by a marketing team. So I didn't talk about the two things that are across the top here yet, before we jump into those, I want to talk about some of the competing interests that I think exist along this continuum. Oops, there we go. So there are a few call outs here. And notably, I think some of the terms I use are inexact. But as you go from right to left on this continuum, you're building more and more trust with a consumer or patient. As you go from left to right, you're serving more and more business financial interests, such as, like new customer acquisition and revenue. At the far left, I think you need to be wary about readability and making sure you're crafting your message in the most appropriate way. And then as you get from about middle to the far right, you run the risk of sounding spammy and less unbiased. So that's just something to keep an eye out for. So with that in mind to touch on the two buckets that I have, at the top, there's, there's public education, and there's branded or sponsored content, these things definitely have their place in the right context. But just at least for my purposes, in the places I've worked so far, they don't strike the right balance of these underlying interests. So they aren't really areas that I focus too much on. Public education would be like a public facing blog of a company that isn't also trying to sell products or services. So maybe they're only really making their money through advertising. And then I think branded or sponsored content can come across as bias depending on how it's written and possibly have a credibility issues if it's being too overt about pushing a specific product without really showing balanced information. So then kind of taking a step back from from this whole thing. And looking at that continuum overall. When you're devising a medical content strategy, I think it's helpful to think about which of these five buckets are targeting based on your team, your goals, how you're navigating these competing interests, and the part of the consumer journey, that you're really focused on? Some of the biggest questions to always ask, what can you do to make sure there's trust even on the right side of this continuum? And then what can you do to make sure business interests are served even on the left side of the continuum? I think we might get into a couple of those questions a little bit later. So then just the last thing I'll say on this before, before we move on, is I think there's always one one final thing to consider when you're putting together your content strategy. And that's basically whether somebody else has already done what you want to do except better. In that case, on the education side, you're not really adding much to the world that needs to be there, on the promotion side, you may not be able to rank on the search engine results page and get the traffic that you want anyway. So sometimes it's good to just recognise when you should link out, use somebody else's resource and focus your own resources on the content that you can actually deliver in a beneficial way. Yeah, so that's, that's basically my monologue on this continuum. So I know that you may have some questions now, specifically about the items there.
Unknown Speaker
That's also Well, thanks
James Naylor
so much for sharing. I think like, the way I'd like to tackle this now is you had those three sections for your continuing had education, the branded health blog, and the product advertising, so maybe we'll walk through them kind of systematically. That's good. But the first one would be like patient education. And going back to your time, Dr. Oz, you mentioned about the need for stuff to be like, personalised based on maybe like demographics, different populations, etc. So that it really resonates with them. Like how, how can you achieve that? In a content business where you're like serving people at scale and still get, like, the personalization that maybe like drives more engagement or, or drives better outcomes?
Mike
Yeah, good question. So I think there's a there's a long list of things, I'd recommend you make sure you're doing to serve, serve content content to patients in the way that they need it. First, you just need to make sure you have the right people in the room setting the strategy. I think, as I mentioned before, patient education should really be driven by the medical team. And if you can get the right specialists in the room. Fantastic. Please try to do that. Of course, you still need like design and product support here to figure out the technical aspects and get everything in the right place. But then in terms of process, I recommend performing clinical guidelines research, doing competitor research to see what others have decided is important. And then really putting a big focus on assessing your own internal data. So if you have healthcare providers working on your on your platform, what topics are healthcare providers saying their patients are most frequently asking about? What questions are patients asking through There are feedback mechanisms like calling in the support line. And it is definitely like you said, definitely important to think about your target population here. But I actually think that comes a little bit more naturally, as long as you have the right medical team representation in the room who are familiar with the patient base. It's just helpful to remember to stick to like an eighth grade reading level for this type of content. And then the other thing I think, is really good to keep in mind. What's what's really important with patient education is remembering what's different from actually being in the provider's office, you aren't there with the patient, you're not answering their questions you're not picking up on when they may have a confused expression. You're not using the the teach back method where you ask if they understood what you said, and haven't kind of explained it back to you. So with with this type of educational material, you really have to do your best to preempt any of those questions. Give unprompted access to more complete information, maybe there's even the opportunity to cross link with your brand of health blog for additional reading, and explain things correctly and fully the first time, because it may end up being the only time you're really communicating to them. And then in terms of adjusting that strategy, just just eke out and listen to that feedback from consumers. It's not like you need to worry about with this content messing up any of the page ranking with edits, since this stuff doesn't need to be SEO friendly. Anyway. So the second year, do you think there's an opportunity to make something better based on feedback? Just go ahead and do it?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, that's fascinating. I um,
James Naylor
I did a little study where I took articles from like the leading patient education websites like CDC, WebMD, etc, put through a readability calculator, a lot of the stuff surprisingly, came back. It's like graduate level readings. So when you look at the average reading levels in the US or Europe, wherever it might be, I want 100% resonate with that, making it really understandable.
Mike
Yeah, there are a lot of really great tools online that you can just use to like, copy paste, it'll tell you exactly like, what the readability level is, and make suggestions. Yeah,
James Naylor
it's so important. Another question, as well, as you mentioned, during your time at dogs Was that something that was really fantastic was like the visual element to it. So when you're showing the effects of like statins, etc, and atherosclerosis? How do you think about like, I guess like rich media video versus like, just text during that patient education phase? Yeah, so
Mike
I think Rich Media and specifically video is is really the way it feature here. We know that the second largest search engine is YouTube. And other platforms like Instagram rails and Tik Tok are increasingly becoming where, where people are getting their health information. Even though creating a video can sometimes take a lot more investment than like just writing a quick article, there's a few reasons I really like using video as a way to communicate, it's it's very efficient, holds people's attention better when done properly. By definition, it's more visual. So like you said, you have more to play with when you're communicating complex topics like demonstrations or and or the animations that we will do on Dr. Oz. And I also think it plays an important role in building patient trusts. You know, for, for all of his benefits, there are some things that just aren't as possible with telemedicine, as with in person care, and one is really fostering that provider patient relationship. Yes, you can have phone calls and video calls and forge a strong connection if you're motivated to, but a lot of people choose efficiency and miss out on those opportunities. So with video content, even if video isn't the prescribing provider, somebody else, there's that opportunity for the patient to still connect with somebody. And the video can really help project empathy and foster patient trusts in a way that written words really just can't. And then in terms of like any other types of rich media, like interactive content, I think this can be your opportunity to really create magic with the patient. There are a lot of competing companies out there now. So if you can create the special experience that keeps patients actively engaged with refreshed interactive content through multiple modalities, I think you'll see the rewards there. There are some conditions that are quick and simple, you get treated, your better. And that's basically it. And maybe those types of patients are looking for like a six month educational journey about their health. But I think digital care has really found this niche when it comes to chronic care management. And that's where you have this opportunity to really help patients along their journey longitudinally, teaching them different things they need to know at different stages of their care. And I think information really empowers them to understand their experience on a deeper level, and hopefully make lifelong change. Yeah,
James Naylor
that's awesome. And maybe like a follow up question on on that point. It's like, I guess when we think about content, it's not just about having the right content. We've spoken about the rich media, making it more engaging, etc. But also like, serving it at the right time. I know quite often a patient can be diagnosed, they've got maybe like 15 minutes with their PCP, and then they're on their way. So like, how do you think about at reaching a, like actively reaching a patient versus maybe the patient putting the onus on the patient to research their condition than themselves.
Mike
Yeah, so I think in this context, more is more, I really think patient education is the opportunity to hit the patient from from all sides. And the reason for that is that I think it's an important part of patient care, you have a responsibility to make sure that really understanding your message, you want to make sure things aren't going on scene. And the repetition can really help hammer some points home, I think there does need to be a lot of thought given to exactly how, like what timeline you release certain information on. And I've worked places where we give people all the information they need up front. And I've also worked places where we kind of actually stepped stagger it and things are unlocked at a certain time period. Because that can actually help with empathy and show that you're understanding where people are disappointed in their care. But overall, I think the duplication across multiple platforms can actually be embraced. And you should take advantage of whatever platforms your company has. So this is this is the content again, that you're surfacing directly doesn't need to be searched for. So you can put educational content and patient journey pop ups, depending on what your platform looks like, on your product, detail pages or landing pages. In like a CRM email journey. If you have a patient portal or a mobile app, you can do it in clickable cards with information or timelines or videos. And then really, in any other messaging platform that you have with your patients. Just specifically for email, I wouldn't be like too annoying if there's an unsubscribe option, because you don't want people to eventually leave. But but most most other platforms that you can surfaces information doesn't have that option. So I think just basically, everybody's different, everybody will pick up what they need to know through different medium. Just make sure it's well organised. So it's not like you're you're throwing spaghetti at the patient. And make sure there's consistency from one platform to the other. So that's something I check in on a lot. If we if we update something in one place, we just need to make sure that we've updated it everywhere else as well.
James Naylor
Awesome, that makes complete sense. And maybe just like a final question on the patient education front, before we move on to like the branded health blog. And that is like, so there are people here from digital healthcare companies. But I think there are few people here who are like providers themselves, like, what advice for you? Would you have for them as someone who's who's been there patient facing if they've got patients who are asking questions? Yeah. Are there any like tools or tips for the for those people?
Mike
Yeah, I think it's, you didn't just really good feedback mechanisms, you need to make sure that there's multiple providers on the platform, the predators are talking to each other, the predators are talking to whatever the in house medical team is for the business person or the company, they are in turn talking to the product team. Because otherwise, otherwise, it'll be hard to identify where the opportunities are, where the issues are. If different providers are all getting the same question, but don't talk to each other, we won't know that that's a gap in the in the information. So yeah, just just very open communication between providers, between providers and business, I think is what can really help here.
James Naylor
Awesome. Yeah, I saw a stat the other day. And as I think, I mean, we'll have to look this up to get the exact dates, but I'm pretty sure like 84% of what your provider tells you, you actually forget between when they tell you and by the time you leave, leave the door, which was interesting. Also, the So moving on, then to the like branded health blog side of things, just top level question, What purpose does this serve?
Mike
Yeah, so I mean, as a quick definition, again, branded health blog is basically like a large content property that's filled with articles, maybe videos, and whatever other kinds of posts you want that focus in on an area of healthcare, and highlight what your company has expertise in. So as we mentioned before, having a branded health blog is a great way to get people to know more about your company, and build expertise, authority and trust for your website. You can think of the content that goes on the blog as being very similar to the patient education, except everybody might see it. So to be able to capitalise on that opportunity. There's a lot of best practices I think are important to follow. First, you do really need to be on top of your SEO game there. This is really the only way you're going to stand out next to your competitors. You can you can bring somebody in house to do this. Or you can record a contracting agency to figure out what you need to do from an SEO perspective. But there's like all the essentials needed, make sure you're filling out like your title and your meta descriptions thinking about images and alt texts. Think about what content is going in the top fold focus on the right length and readability be transparent about the authors and medical reviewers of each piece. Strong internal and external linking strategy updating the pages. There's really a lot pair and every Every little piece can incrementally help. I think it's also good to include some sort of disclaimer, basically identifying that this is content that's intended to be informational, but isn't for the practice of medicine. So I think that's how you differentiate what goes on a branded health blog versus patient education. And then there's a couple of certifications that you can actually pursue. That help certify that your website is legitimate health information. If you scroll to the bottom of some of the main like health websites you've got, you'll see a little badges along the bottom. And it's pretty easy for any company to go and apply for those as well. That those certifications usually have like a list of principles. And as long as you're following the principles that then go up as their badge. So I think if you get all these pieces together correctly, you can have a successful blog that ranks well in search engines, drives traffic to your page, which may be what your real goal is there, and showcases what your company is what your company has expertise in.
James Naylor
And when you shared your screen, you had the black arrow that was I think it was like, Is it unique or something along those lines? Like there's there is a lot of medical information out there. You can search a lot of conditions, and there's pages and pages of articles. So like, how can you evaluate whether what you're creating really is like unique and something that the world needs? I guess?
Mike
Yeah. Good. Good question.
Unknown Speaker
So
Mike
I think building out a content strategy depends on exactly what your goals are. Whether you want to contribute to the medical literature in a specific area, what have you recorded, you want to highlight expertise in your company in like a condition or even more specifically around a certain type of products. So the steps to build out that strategy, I think, include focusing on high converting topics. And then like I said, you have to identify competitor gaps. So what we'll often do, and a bunch of the places that I've worked is we'll do keyword research, what we'll set like Keyword Difficulty thresholds and keyword volume thresholds to see what what already has a lot of things going for it and where maybe we can really contribute something that's meaningful. And then once we've identified kind of an area that doesn't have that much around it, write several articles that web around the similar topic. And then you can actually take advantage of like internal linking to one another to further boost up your domain authority.
James Naylor
Yeah, yeah, that that makes complete sense. That's awesome. Okay, and then final question on the on the health side? Because I'm sure we have got some some marketers here, but like, how do you think about building out a team here? Like, where does it start? And yeah, what should the relationship between marketing and clinical, even like, product, etc? look like? Yeah.
Mike
Yeah. So in my experience, a really effective team is a strong collaboration between the editors and healthcare professionals. Depending on how big your company is, there are a lot of roles that could eventually fill the team, writers, editors, medical reviewers, SEO specialists, producers, designers, content strategists, there's a lot that can go in there. The biggest impact when I think it comes to a health blog, I think and it looks like search engines also feel this way is that medical review component actually, like putting through the medical reviewers and having some doctor's name at the top of the page is a really strong indicator that this page should rank well. So if you only have the resources for a small team, I'd take that list of everybody I just mentioned, and basically see what you can combine together. So if you can get some writers who are well trained in SEO and combine those two things together, and then get some medical reviewers who can do both medical review, and editing, when they go through each piece. That's a good way to start with a really lean team. And then you can build out as needed. And then in terms of like how everybody works together. So it the importance of the collaboration between the growth team and the medical team. What I've seen in a few places is that editors will put together the initial content strategy, but then the medical team will come in and basically pare that down based on what makes sense medically. Sometimes topics can be combined, sometimes something is missing, sometimes something we're gonna be doesn't belong there, because it doesn't actually fit into the category that well. So basically, having two passes through every content strategy is one that's primarily by biomedical is something I definitely recommend. You can also the two teams can also work closely together on creating a style guide. So your contents cohesive. Yeah, more on the marketing side, you have to figure out what you want to do about ad units. So are you selling ad space? Or are you creating your ad units? You can also think about how else do you want to surface this content? So let's say you have like a really strong social media presence. It's just your website isn't getting that much traffic yet. Think about if you want to leverage your social media to highlight your articles and then really steer the traffic the way you want them to go to your website into your domain authority does increase. So yeah, I think we're both teams were committed Whether this is opportunity to build a strategy around three arms at once you can use the blog, you can use your social media, you can use your patient education. And all three of those things should really tell a similar story link from one to the other to the other and create an overall ecosystem of medical education that's easy to navigate.
James Naylor
Okay, that's a that's really great. And then maybe moving on to the final one, which is product product advertising. And I'd love to ask, you mentioned some stuff like out of home, and I guess, you know, there's that side of product advertising and healthcare, but like, how, where do you draw the line between maybe like the branded health blog? And then like, the product advertising side of things? And is there often a lot of like, crossover there? Or do you see them as kind of very, very separate?
Unknown Speaker
So
Mike
granted, health blog, I think is something that how do I divide these my mind, I would say, when you're writing a plan, and how Granda health blog, that's something that's still really requires, like deep research research. And I don't know, it's not the most juicy marketing material. When I'm when I'm thinking about product advertising, I'm thinking about like, Google and Facebook ads, commercials, billboards, direct mail, sometimes email, sometimes SMS. So one is a much shorter form of content, and one is much more involved. But But I do think the clinical team still has a really important role when it comes to, like over marketing, even for even for the smaller items. I think, you know, unless you find somebody who has has had an atypical career path, you're not necessarily going to find healthcare professionals who are fantastic marketers, they do exist. But when it comes to product advertising, putting together effective materials does does require collaboration between the teams, I guess that's the theme here branded health blog also requires a lot of collaboration. So usually, the strategy with the product advertising would be driven by the marketing team. And then the medical team, typically, like in collaboration with legal or regulatory team is there to basically make sure everything is kosher before it goes out the door. So that basically means any health information that does exist there, a lot of times, there'll be like a great statistic that's great for marketing or a great medical claim. So making sure the health information, medically accurate statistics are up to date, correct, substantiated, and that any government regulations are being followed. I think there is a place for the medical team to identify opportunities that the marketing team may not think of. So for example, they can highlight a certain target population for a certain set of ads based on the conditions epidemiology, or there's like, just a really cool are fun scientific fact about the mechanism of action of a drug, you can suggest how to like turn that into an interesting add. But I think exactly how deep the medical team goes into the process is really a function of company culture. And also just how many other things your medical team is busy doing. In some situations, I've seen the medical team, not look at advertising at all, until it was ready to go out the door. And in other situations, I've seen the medical team sit in on every marketing meeting, actually at an embedded part of the team.
James Naylor
I mean, you've seen some companies really get this wrong, and rightfully, I think they quite often get dragged through the mud on social media and when that happens, but how do you personally think about avoiding a situation where maybe not factually incorrect, but like, slightly ambiguous medical claims are made, etc. And the role of like, even legal, potentially or medical in in that that?
Mike
Yeah, that's a good question. Because it isn't, it's rare that something is just like, actually incorrect, that goes out the door anywhere. But But thinking about like, if, if your wording is misleading, or if you're just like inadvertently leaving something out, should also really, really playing to this. So that's why I think having having a strong medical legal regulatory MLR process is really important to have your I've seen a range of how this can be done. But a few things really stand out to me for driving success. Once again, in general, more collaborations better. As the marketing team is first to start working on something I usually really recommend early concept reviews with medical and legal representatives or regulatory representatives. I think having a lot of available internal education and training is also very beneficial. I've put a lot of effort into this in the past. So there should be like a style guide or brand book that the marketing team has put together that the medical regulatory teams become familiar with. And then on the flip side, there should be a bank of reference materials, and maybe even like prior approved content, that medical and regulatory teams put together that the marketing team can become familiar with. So it's really a two way street of educating each other. When any decisions are made about a strategic decision to go with marketing, I think it's really important to document that this Then document any substantiation that went into the claims that were being used. And then I also think it's important to identify a final decision maker. So, so teams never really hit an impasse. When it's done well, I've seen this really hum along and everybody works together. It's only when there's really like a breakdown in internal communication that sometimes it feels like medical objectives and business objectives can diverge.
James Naylor
That makes complete sense. Okay, awesome. And then I'm gonna ask one more question before I open it up to the floor for any questions from the audience. But that's just around around the future. I mean, I think we're at an interesting point, you've seen open AI releasing all of their tools that are platforms like runway in which you're doing AI video even. And also the rise of short for media with tick tock, et cetera. I mean, do you personally see any big shifts on the horizon in respect to health content and health education?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, so I think
Mike
many of the shifts I see are extensions of the trends we're already witnessing. Growing like he just mentioned the growing role of social media and conveying medical information. The use of short form video, the the need to make everything mobile friendly. I think we've seen over the past few years, we've seen a shift in healthcare itself with the with the broad exceptions of telemedicine. And I think that's presented a lot of opportunities for medical content. And I think there'll be more opportunities as other big shifts in healthcare occur, the availability of more in home care of remote patient monitoring, of at home lab testing, all of these things will eventually need to be communicated taught advertised to patients. And I'm sure there's going to be new developments for exactly how to do all of that. More broadly, though, I think we're in this really interesting age, where healthcare is becoming more commercial and less paternalistic, for lack of a better word. Health information used to be in the minds of people who got medical information communicated to patients as needed an office or hospital setting. Now, health information and healthcare itself can can be accessed anywhere. In the US, I don't think about like this is true in the UK, but we have direct to consumer advertising, prescription medications. So now patients go to providers asking for what they want, rather than providers just telling them what they need. Like you mentioned, you can go on any number of websites, or even some of the AI chat bots, now. I've played around with them. In my own experience, they still aren't perfect about accurately presenting medical information, but I'm sure they'll get there and are pretty close. And people can find out whatever they want to know about a condition or medication on their own. And I think we still just don't know what the result of all that's going to be at. On one hand, obviously, it's fantastic. It's the democratisation of health information. But there's also so many opportunities for it to be misused. And so many opportunities for the typical consumer just not to know if something is right or wrong, or how to properly balance the evidence. We already know there's the running joke that you can put simple symptoms like headache and into certain websites. And it'll always tell you, you might have cancer. So I'm not necessarily advocating for this. But I do wonder if one of the big shifts we're going to see in the future will have to do with regulation. We've already seen search engines try to navigate this with with algorithm updates that that target how and how the permissions ranked. And we'll see if that sort of thing is enough, or if further actions is actually needed.
James Naylor
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions. I'll now open up to the floor. So if anyone has any questions, please feel free to put them in the chat. While we do that, I did actually get a question that came in and, and I know this isn't so much your background, but I'll ask it anyway. The question is relating to like, what are the top challenges at established care organisations as they still dominate the volume in the in the market? And how can they how can they better educate better educate patients maybe without all of the digital teams that are venture backed tech company might have?
Mike
Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't know if I have a perfect answer for it. I will agree that I've noticed getting care from a larger established organisation doesn't come with great education. It's usually very old, served up in an old way you still do get the pamphlets I've seen them. I've seen video actually brought into into hospital rooms but not the most engaging videos. I think there are some organisations that that have tried breaking through Cleveland Clinic has a has a blog called HEALTH ESSENTIALS. I think that I've enjoyed obviously Mayo Clinic has as well digital property. And I think maybe back to how it moved me back to Cleveland Clinic, they've also upped their their social media game. So I don't have a good answer other than just to say like, it is time to embrace the digital trends and update but what you have at the moment?
James Naylor
Yeah, awesome. Thanks. So we got one more question that's come in from from Sasha, cloud health. What are some metrics you use or think content should use to measure patient engagement?
Mike
Okay, so this is this is a really good question. Because I think this comes up a lot when we're planning specifically in the in the patient education space, what we, what we want to measure to see if things have been effective. I do think measuring the effectiveness of patient education can can be challenging because it doesn't fit typical business metrics. So I actually kind of see that as a mistake. Sometimes people trying to do exactly that using marketing metrics, or financial metrics to determine if patient education is performing well. Or creating a new piece of education is going to be worth it, you know that there's some things that we look at, we really look at traffic and conversions for like the stuff on our bladder, on our on our health blog. But when you're talking about educating patients, the problem is what you're really hoping to accomplish is more effective care. And the result of that would be tracking clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction. So there are definitely some proxies, you can use patient and you can look at patient engagement by maybe looking at heat maps, if you have an app, or just on your website, seeing people are scrolling through the whole page where they're clicking, if they're using all of it. You can look at retention as a measure of whether people are satisfied overall. But I think it's hard to separate that from the rest of the experience. You can try tracking clinical outcomes if you have access to that data, perhaps like if you have if you have follow up visits, but that may only represent a small sample size of everyone who received the information. So I think one thing that I would just recommend is if you have any mechanisms of gathering qualitative data, or people writing in and saying, Wow, this material is great, or hey, I found this to be like confusing, then pay attention to that. I think just one overall pitfall I'd recommend avoiding is just not thinking that the patient education is worth it. Don't be scared of things that are difficult to measure. Patient Education is it's about giving patients at least everything they might need. And hopefully even more than that. So So yeah, this is this has been something I I frequently struggle with is how do you make sure this is doing well? How do you track it? How do you prove a case for doing more of it? You need to separate the idea that it's attached to the other metrics you may look at on other teams.
James Naylor
Awesome. Thank you for that. And we've got one more question from mineral Shah, we've got a couple of questions from mineral Shah, as a hospitalist and physician informants assist, I feel that the patient education process at the point of hospital discharge is broken. A large percentage of patients do not even understand their diagnosis at discharge, I can speak to that I was definitely one of them. And it's particularly vulnerable, vulnerable time for patients. What are the best pack practices for inpatient education? I know it's not where you spend your time, but I'm not sure if there's anything you can speak to that.
Mike
Yeah, I mean, when I alluded to a really bad presentation I saw at our hospital, it was it was like the discharge instructions. That was an absolutely awful presentation that they showed right before work before it's time to leave. I think this is where you really need to figure out what the capabilities of a patient portal are. Because your people aren't going to listen to whatever is thrown at them in that last 15 minutes before they walk out the door. They're thinking about other things, maybe they're still overwhelmed by their care, this is just not going to stick with them. So there needs to be some kind of platform for again, serving serving that information up in as many different channels as you possibly can. You're at it's not where I where I spend most of my time. So I'm not sure what, what available options there are right now. But again, I would just recommend like Bescot hospital systems into the digital age.
James Naylor
Yeah, no, I definitely get we got one more. And maybe I think I might get a similar answer from you. It sounds like I managed to do a webinar with someone who spent a lot of time with people called Legacy health systems. But the question comes from Jonathan Klaus, I've written patient education content for a large hospital. The process for getting reviews and feedback can be gruelling, which is why most things are old. How do you keep the process as streamlined and efficient as possible? And maybe you can speak to your current experience and how you keep it streamlined as well?
Mike
Yeah, so actually, most most feedback that we've gotten on our patient education materials, how X ray comes unexpectedly through other forums. If we're doing like beta testing of a new product, will we actually get like unprompted feedback that calls out the educational material? So actually, I actually don't specifically ask about it, I just look to see if we're getting some of that unprompted feedback, because I think that's a good sign. And if we're not getting anybody just like calling out on their own, hey, I love this, then there's probably a problem with it. It's not something that stuck in their head. So it's also maybe maybe not the greatest answer again. But I, I think sometimes silence is a bad sign. I want people to be so excited by what they're seeing that they reach back out and say, Hey, I love this.
James Naylor
Well, Mike, I think that's all the questions. We've managed to keep this within within the hour. So I really, really appreciate the time to the audience. We've recorded this and got a transcript. So we'll be sharing that via email. And, yeah, thank you for your time, and we'll speak soon.